India must speak out on Syria

If the barricades in Damascus get overrun, the battle against Islamist radicalism is lost in the region. Source: Reuters

With the BRICS summit coming up, New Delhi cannot afford to fail in defining its self-interests when the flame of Islamist militancy lurches across the so-called Greater Middle East.

The
Syrian special envoy Bouthaina Shaaban who visited New Delhi last week to make
the demarche that India should raise its voice and help the BRICS summit
meeting in Durban (March 26-27) make a “very strong decision” aimed at helping
end the violence in her country that has killed 70000 people. But, alas, Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh couldn’t receive her.

In
particular, Shaaban harped on the multi-ethnic and plural character of the
Syrian society, its adherence to secular values and its abhorrence of radical
Islamism (“Wahhabi fundamentalist terrorists”) and the blatant external
intervention and most tragically, the injection of the sectarian Shia-Sunni
virus to fragment the Syrian nation, similar to what was done to Iraq through
the past decade. Woven into the narrative is the great game over the massive
energy reserves of the Levant Basin, which the West aims to control.

India
chose to meander through the past couple of years – at one point even
identifying itself as one of the “Friends of Syria” forum that unabashedly
proclaimed its objective of regime change. The trapeze acts by Indian diplomats
have been so cheeky that one gasped for breath. Sadly enough, going by the South
Block’s anodyne statement last week regarding Shaaban’s visit, revisionism permeates
the current Indian stance. It is appalling that the MEA statement did not even
care to mention the root cause of the bloodbath in Syria, namely, external
intervention and the push for regime change. Why is it that India’s voice on
Syria hardly audible and it cannot even forcefully condemn the external
intervention in Syria with the specific purpose of imposing a regime change?

The
two Arab regional states spearheading the assault on Syria’s sovereignty –
Qatar and Saudi Arabia – cynically insist that they are promoting democracy and
human rights! They are in actuality using Salafist fighters and the affiliates
of al-Qaeda as instruments of policy with sectarian motives aimed at curbing
the exuberance of the growing Shi’ite empowerment in the region. This is not
dissimilar to what Saudi Arabia did in the 1990s by injecting Wahhabist
ideology into Afghanistan (which was rooted in moderate Sufi Islam), which
ultimately manifested as the grotesque Taliban movement. Of course, the Saudis
lost nothing in that ghastly enterprise and, in fact, are today, along with
Qatar, happily back in the game by re-integrating the Taliban into the Afghan
power structure. The Saudi and Qatari motivations in Afghanistan and Syria bear
striking similarity.

The
Saudi-Qatari regional agenda is antithetical to India’s core interests and
vital concerns. But India seems to have lost the plot. Somehow the Saudis have
come to cast their shadow on our so-called identity politics in regions such as
Uttar Pradesh or Kerala, and our savvy politicians know very well what is good
for them in this coalition era. Meanwhile, yarns have been spun conveniently to
make it out to be that India and Saudi Arabia are strategic allies in the
struggle against terrorism. In reality, though, Riyadh fights terrorists only
on its soil who threaten the survival of the regime, while the same elements
masquerading as radical Islamist forces readily become hand tools for Saudi
regional policies in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria.

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In
the ultimate analysis, however, this goes beyond a question of the nexus
between the Saudis and religious circles in India or the weakening moral fibre
of the Indian politician and his compulsion to tap into identity politics.
Simply put, it is a matter of principle that India should voice its disquiet
over the blatant Saudi-Qatari intervention in Syria, which is destabilizing a
staunchly secular country, and Syria also happens to be a friendly country that
stood by India – ironically, even to the extent of helping our efforts to frustrate
Saudi-driven charades in the Organization of Islamic Conference over our
Kashmir problem.

India
cannot afford to fail in defining its self-interests when the flame of Islamist
militancy lurches across the so-called Greater Middle East. Syria has always
been the “beating heart of the Arab world” and if the barricades in Damascus
get overrun, the battle against Islamist radicalism is lost in the region.